SWEET CRUMBLES

Coffeecake is a snap to bake and can be the perfect pick-me-up snack

About the author

Jill O’Connor is a local San Diego food writer, pastry chef and author of six cookbooks including “Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey: Desserts for the Serious Sweet Tooth.” She lives in Coronado with her husband and two daughters.

Ihave personally witnessed the power of a good coffeecake.

As the official snack mom to my daughter Sophia’s softball team, I bring a cooler of juices and waters, bags of bright orange Little Cuties, and, of course, homemade cookies — from chocolate chip to snickerdoodles — to every game. The girls are tired when they walk off the field, and although they always thank me, they are anxious to find their parents and head home, and they never linger long.

Except for one day in Chula Vista. It was the beginning of the season, and the other team was bigger, more experienced and seemed to have arms made of steel. They played hard, but we still lost. Our team walked off the field, dusty and hot, and a little blue. I pulled open my trusty, traveling, two-tiered treat carrier. It was filled with generous squares of New York-Style Crumb Cake; rich and moist, topped with a heaping mound of brown sugar crumble. I felt like a superhero; the coaches hugged me; the girls started giggling; the parents smiled. It was a good day for softball. And for coffeecake.

It’s hard not to love coffeecake. Rich, single-layer cakes named for the brew they accompany, coffeecakes are homey and comforting, sturdy and much less complicated for the home cook to prepare than other breakfast sweets like cinnamon rolls or doughnuts.

Coffeecakes can be simple — a butter cake flavored with vanilla, lemon, or spices and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar before baking. Or they can be more elaborate, filled with sweetened cream cheese and fresh berries, enriched with fruit purées or jam and topped with nuts and sweet crumb toppings before they are drizzled with icing made from confectioners’ sugar stirred together with a little milk or lemon juice.

They are easy cakes to pull together and don’t require a great deal of baking expertise to master. Sour cream, crème fraîche, cream cheese, yogurt and buttermilk feature prominently in many coffeecake recipes for a reason; these acidic ingredients add flavor but also help tenderize the cake by inhibiting the formation of gluten, keeping them moist.

A good coffeecake is a good “keeper,” meaning it will stay sweet and tender under a cake dome for a couple of days without going stale. That is, if it lasts that long. Homemade coffeecake can be addictive.

Coffeecake is a beloved breakfast or morning snack here in the United States, but its roots lie in the German “kuchen,” most notably Streuselkuchen, meaning “crumb cake.” Kuchen was traditionally made with yeast-raised dough covered in a sweet, crumbled topping made from butter, sugar and flour. Kuchen gradually evolved to include butter cakes leavened with baking powder or baking soda. The classic streusel coffeecake is flavored with cinnamon and/or nutmeg and covered in a thick mountain of crisp, brown sugar-sweet crumbs.

According to Arthur Schwartz, famed food writer and New York native, it is the crisp, large crumbs that make a New York-Style Crumb Cake so good. He recommends using dark brown sugar for the crispiest results. To get big, chunky crumbs, stir together the melted butter, sugar and flour with a fork. When combined, grab handfuls of crumbs and compress them together. Then break these larger nuggets of streusel into slightly smaller pieces and scatter over the batter before baking.